"You will not be troubled, I hope, if I pour out from my mind a little of the satisfaction which I feel, and in which I am rejoicing more and more every day. Since my return, the congratulations of my friends have been absolutely overpowering; and from seeing more and more of Miss Pickard, I am made to feel more and more grateful for the kind providence which has led me to this result. You know all my feelings and views, and the process of my mind, and I shall therefore be understood by you as by nobody else. It is not a common feeling which fills me; it is something peculiar, sacred, as if I had been under a supernatural guidance, and been made to act from pure and elevated and disinterested motives, for the purpose of accomplishing some great good. Every thing is connected with the memory of the past and with my former happiness, in such a way as not to sadden the present, but to give to it a singular spirituality, if I may so say; and I feel that, if the departed know what is transacting here, my own Elizabeth would congratulate me as sincerely as any of my friends. I have sought for the best mother to her children, and the best I have found. I have desired a pattern and blessing for my parish, and I have found one. I have wished some one to bear my load with me, and to help, confirm, and strengthen my principle by her own high and experienced piety, and such I have found. All these things, meeting in one person,--I might have looked for each alone, but where else are they to be all found in such excellent proportions united? I surveyed them with cool judgment, and I shall by and by love them ardently.
Dear Harriet, I must have somebody to pour out myself to; so bear the infliction charitably. Good by. Yours ever lovingly.
The character of Mary Pickard would not be drawn, but one of her noblest traits be left out of view, if we failed to speak frankly of the former affection to which Mr. Ware refers, and the memory of which she herself cherished, at first and always. She had no sympathy, and little respect, for that narrow view which insists that one affection must crowd out another; that the departed and the living cannot share the same pure love of the same true heart. The happiness of husband and wife and household has sometimes been impaired by a mistaken apprehension on this subject, and a suspicion of feelings in each other which had no real existence, or existed only from the want of mutual and free expression. We have even known cruel attempts made by others to prejudice the minds of those most concerned, and especially the children of a former mother. For such attempts, and all thoughts of the kind, we cannot repress our indignant reproof. No false delicacy should prevent the utterance of truth, where the best affections and dearest interests are involved. Instead of avoiding the subject, we are grateful for the opportunity which such characters as Henry and Mary Ware give us, of presenting the just, generous, and Christian view. One of her own children has said of her: "Perhaps no one thing in her character and conduct has oftener struck common minds with surprise, and superior ones with admiration, than this entire freedom and frankness in regard to the first wife? 'She was the nearest and dearest to _him_,' she would say, 'how, then, can I do otherwise than love her and cherish her memory?' And her children she received as a precious legacy; they were to her from the first moment like her own; neither she nor they knew any distinction."